


Entanglement

by ViolettaValery



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 20:40:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19411000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolettaValery/pseuds/ViolettaValery
Summary: “Do you remember that night you felt how hopeful I was, and you told me home could be a person?” Alex asks when the silence stretches between them.“Yes,” she says with a growing feeling of dread.“He’s that person,” Alex says quietly, and his words echo like a gunshot through her.(or, Michael and Alex's relationship from  Maria's POV, post 1x13).





	Entanglement

**Author's Note:**

> The brief convo with Alex saying "he's that person" just popped into my head and wouldn't let me rest and this is the result. Thanks as always to insidious-intent for supporting and beta-ing!

She bumps into Alex on her way out of Liz’s lab.

They’ve all been taking turns looking after Michael as he works himself to death trying to bring Max back with Liz’s help. But while Liz has the presence of mind to allow herself to rest, Michael doesn’t give up, and so it falls to the people who care about him to show up and look after him: Alex, Isobel – and now Maria.

The two of them hadn’t managed to get anywhere even in the vicinity of dating, partly because it promptly became clear that Michael wasn’t looking for anything _real._ But despite that knowledge, her treacherous heart still _cares,_ because it had always been more than hurled insults and a dusty Texas rounder. Even now, as she glances back at him bending over and swearing at a bubbling beaker as his wild curls fall around his face, she feels a pang of emotions she cannot define.

She turns back to Alex, who’s clutching a Crashdown meal and a bottle of acetone.

“Alex – “ she tries. “I was hoping we could talk.”

She knows she should have talked to Alex before, _long_ before, but Michael had shown up at the Wild Pony, and in a bout of madness, she’d allowed herself to _hope._ Had thrown caution out the window along with her friendship with Alex.

“What is there to say, Maria?” Alex asks wearily.

He looks – tired. It’s Alex who’s been scraping Michael off the floor regularly for the past several weeks, without judgment or complaint. Max’s death had shattered Michael in a way Maria never thought possible, and he had promptly spiraled. It would have put the nail in the coffin of anything she could’ve had with him even if Michael’s feelings for her had been anything real to begin with. When he wasn’t staying up for 36 hours straight tinkering with alien science, he was drinking himself into passing out and getting into fights, though he at least has the decency not to grace the Wild Pony, preferring to fight with tourists at Saturn’s Ring instead, or even in the street. In short, he’s the same Guerin he’d been before Alex rolled back into town, and she can’t decide if it’s convoluted self-punishment or an attempt to stop feeling anything, or both. Perhaps, she thinks, it’s a way to drive home the particularly painful point that Max isn’t there to pick him up and throw him in jail overnight along with a lecture.

She opens her mouth to say something to Alex, one of the many speeches she’s rehearsed but chickened out of speaking out loud, and finds that she can’t say any of them to his face. Because Alex doesn’t look angry. His fury she would have understood, would have found reassuring and known what to do with, but Alex merely looks resigned.

“Do you remember that night you felt how hopeful I was, and you told me home could be a person?” he asks when the silence stretches between them. 

“Yes,” she says with a growing feeling of dread.

“He’s that person,” Alex says quietly, and his words echo like a gunshot through her. 

She watches as Alex glances over at Michael, who raises his head from the latest experiment and glimpses Alex. Immediately he breaks into a blinding smile, though it’s quickly schooled behind a mask. Alex, for his part, smiles back, more contained but still genuine.

“I’m sorry,” she offers.

Alex shrugs as he walks past her to offer Michael the sustenance he’s brought and coax him into a break.

She doesn’t know what it is that makes her linger and watch.

“Hey there, Private,” Michael drawls, glancing up from his experiment. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m a civilian now. Maybe you should try calling me something else.”

Michael rests an elbow on the counter, leaning on it.

“What should I call you, then?”

“How about just Alex?”

She can see Michael’s mask cracking, shattering. It’s ridiculous how easily it does so – like a stone shattering a window.

“Alex, I – “

“I brought you food.” He holds out his offering. “The Beef Me Up Burger, just like you like it.”

Alex knows Michael’s favorite Crashdown order, Maria realizes. She’s spent ten years staring at the guy over a bar and never bothered to learn a thing about him, too wrapped up in all the things he could do for her. Alex had spent a chunk of those ten years in a war zone, and he still knows.

“Don’t have time,” Michael mutters.

“Guerin. _Michael._ You won’t do Max any good if you pass out from hunger,” he says reasonably. Then, when Michael still looks reluctant: “I brought a shake, too. So you can dip your fries. And I can watch your experiment while you eat.” Because apparently, Michael likes dipping his fries in a shake. She hadn’t known that either.

That breaks down the last of Michael’s defenses.

"Thank you," he says, with a weight to the words that suggests it's about more than just food.

"You're welcome," Alex says with the same seriousness.

They stay still for a moment, holding each other’s gaze in their own little world. Then Michael turns, reaching for a chair for Alex (rather than the taller stools that would leave his leg dangling), while Alex takes the lid off Michael’s shake and unwraps the fries, ready for dipping. They move silently and yet in perfect sync. Like a pair of dancers. No, like a pair of – entangled particles. Guerin had told her about them once; most of the physics he talked about went past her head with a whooshing sound, but the idea of two particles connected with some invisible force, a perfect mirror of each other despite the distance separating them – that had stuck with her. And for one mad, wild moment she had thought that maybe she’d found that, with him.

Now, she realizes that she’s standing in the cold, looking through the windows into the warmth of someone else’s home. 


End file.
